We’ve all heard about what happened to Ted Williams after he died. His son John-Henry Williams had his body transferred to the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Arizona where they froze his body in the hopes that, one day, medical science could reanimate The Greatest Hitter Who Ever Lived.
There has been controversy and litigation about all of that over the past decade. Now come some details in the form of a new biography of Williams entitled The Kid: The Immortal Life of Ted Williams,” by Ben Bradlee Jr., to be published tomorrow by Little, Brown and Co. Today the Boston Globe has an adapted excerpt from it. Specifically, the part about what happened to The Kid’s body in the hours after his death.
It also has some background on how Williams’ body found its way to Alcor. Specifically, on John-Henry Williams’ fascination with cryogenics cryonics. A fascination so great that it may very well have trumped his father’s specific wishes about what he wanted to have done with his remains after he died.
You can read this as an interesting set of anecdotes about Ted Williams. You can also read this as a somewhat unsettling glimpse at what waits in store for many people who approach death and depend on their families to take care of their final wishes.
But either way: it’s the best thing you’ll hear about a former .400 hitter being decapitated all day. I guarantee you that.
